virtual team building activities

50+ Fun Team Building Activities Your Remote Team Will Love

Tea vs Coffee facilitates an exotic coffee and tea tasting experience with real beverages. A week or so before your event, your employees receive a mix of four specialty teas, coffees and infusions in the mail. Each envelope is marked as “do not open” to save the big surprise for the event. The goal is to help you skyrocket your company culture and employee engagement. For successful virtual icebreakers, the host should designate who is next throughout the activity. Available for download on iPhones and Androids, you can play this app-based version of Mario Kart right from your smartphone.

virtual team building activities

Show one of the Tangram design on your screen for 20 seconds and then have the image disappear. Ask participants to move their webcam to show their design. Give one person a design that they have to describe to their partner without showing them the design. Click through for a full handout with 30 Virtual Team Building Games.

How Do You Make A Virtual Meeting More Fun?

It can feel lonely when you’re in your home office, so getting creative with virtual team building can help you stay connected with your co-workers. After all, if you feel a sense of camaraderie with your team, you’ll be more productive and happy at work. At Vistaprint, we’ve been working in global teams for a while, and recently the majority of the company is working from home. Here, we’ve collected twelve virtual team building activities ideas to help you stay connected – many of which are tried-and-tested.

virtual team building activities

Studies show that if employees feel disconnected and isolated from their teams, 27% don’t make it beyond their first year. For those who do decide to stick things out, their productivity can drop by up to 21%. Organize virtual happy hours to revisit those memories, and connect over your favorite drink. Going to the pantry, having an unofficial meeting there while grabbing our beloved coffee used to be a routine during those office-going days.

Build Company Culture With Virtual Team Building

Without seeing the picture, each person must attempt to reproduce the picture based only on what the selected team member is saying to them! The ultimate goal is that everyone is able to create the same picture as the original. Team builders can help teams relax, prompt creativity and imagination, and allow team members to start building trust. They can also facilitate connections among team members who otherwise may not speak that often, or would not build a relationship without being prompted. Keep in mind though, team building doesn’t just mean getting the team together to hangout and talk. It is a well thought out process that is based off of psychology and a considered approach.

Encourage everyone to share a funny story and order food from their favorite restaurant. Once everyone has told their funny story and has laughed their butts off, just relax and enjoy each other’s company. Sometimes you just need a bit of a laugh to help your team relax and bond with each other. In this activity, you don’t even need to create your own memes and can find the content from your favorite meme site. Choose from trivia, word puzzles, custom quizzes, and so much more!

It takes intention and awareness to get to know our employees and colleagues as whole people. Also, consider encouraging the use of the chat feature in meetings. Just be thoughtful about establishing norms around how it’s used and “plant” some cultural pioneers to lead the way. At BetterUp, for instance, the chat is a scrolling love-fest of appreciation and witticisms. While it might be a little distracting, it also keeps people connected and engaged.

Employees who work in an office together build relationships naturally through face-to-face interactions, meetings, lunches, and office events. It’s common for companies to use virtual team-building activities to kick start meetings, senior https://globalcloudteam.com/ strategy days, etc. It’s also common for companies to use virtual events as part of ice breakers before team meetings. Virtual team events & meetings go hand in hand, & team activities are a great way to segway into a team meeting.

Need Help Getting Started Or Want A Quote? We Are Here To Help

Heather Harper has a Masters in Occupational Psychological from the University of Manchester. She currently works as an editorial writer specialising in organizational psychology – helping teams work better together. In the package, don’t forget to add a little note explaining all the different things and why you decided to include them in the box. Although not an activity that involves working as a team directly, this activity will increase morale and trust, leading to positive team outcomes. They can be something as simple as they are proud of themselves or someone else for keeping on top of their email correspondence or being nice about a matter outside of work.

Virtual team building is employee engagement done virtually! It takes the concept of an in-person activity & provides remote employees with an option to stay engaged no matter where they are dialing in. Virtual team building improves employee engagement & communication. Activities range from online escape rooms, ice breakers, quizzes & so much more! Virtual team activities are also known as online events, digital activities, work from home team activities, etc.

virtual team building activities

A really fun activity that we tried recently was having a Paris local show us around their city via Zoom. They wore a GoPro and live streamed riding around the beautiful streets on a bike. We found that most of these tools though have expensive per user pricing models. The one that we like the most for it’s beautifully simple reporting was PulseMate, it lets you add unlimited users for one flat price. The game play and guides help ensure that everyone knows how to play the game right even if it’s their first time. Online virtual escape rooms blew up in 2020 as it became impossible to visit the ones in the real world because of the pandemic.

They’ve got over 100,000 trivia questions all organised into hundreds of trivia topics ready to run at the click of a button. The reason why we’ve placed this game first is because of how well designed it is. The players each have great backstories that are sure to give everyone a great time reenacting them.

Sometimes, working with an event planner to run your activities can be a big win. For example, you as the organizer can participate and bond with your colleagues too. Each task completion must be accompanied by a photo of the team member completing it. Have all teams gather and submit their photos to the company chat group. Create smaller groups from your team and send each group of people an identical list of tasks to complete. Gift-giving not only gives employees something to look forward to, but it allows team members to form a deeper bond and feel thankful for one another.

The New Free Rider: How To Keep Social Loafing From Ruining Your Teams

Communication in the Workplace Crossed wires and missed connections – good communication among teams is tablestakes for effective teamwork. Collaborative online activities allow managers to improve team leadership skills and recognize each employee’s talents and skills, making for more efficient task delegation. Many of the games and exercises listed above give large teams a chance to collaborate over tasks in a friendly environment, which is essential for innovation, productivity, and efficiency. Similar to the Desert Island Scenario, scavenger hunts boost communication and collaboration while also letting them delegate tasks and utilize each other’s strengths and skills.

Range provides remote teams with the functionality they need to stay strong and effective together. Easily host virtual check-ins and standups and ask your co-workers questions designed by teamwork experts to help everyone feel connected. Virtual team building activities can be online games that you play on a shared screen or unique, shared offline experiences you can use to build common ground for future conversations. Zoom – Maybe the gold standard in video conferencing software, and our favorite for virtual team building because of the breakout rooms feature. Have your team members prepare any meal, and then connect for a virtual call while you eat and chat. You can suggest ice breakers or games to keep the conversation going.

As a team, they will try to paint a specific agreed-upon picture by following the formatting rules. The unbridled joy of getting lost in the pages of a book is truly unparalleled. Share it with your team and get them to hop on the reading train as well! Establish a book reading group, and chalk out your top picks for the month.

  • ” The Atlassian brand and events teams took this time-honored Monday morning question into the virtual world by sharing stories and photos from their weekend over chat – but with a twist.
  • Get competitive with your teammates as you race each other in this sophisticated simulator.
  • Just remember, employee recognition programs and team-building activities don’t always have to be big or expensive to be great.
  • We’ve had many teams come to us recently asking what they can do to give their employees a little respite this summer.
  • Team building can increase communication and morale on any team since it’s a crucial part of an ongoing employee engagement strategy.
  • Currently, we’re using a HR Management Software called Silem for virtual team building hope it gets to our goal as expected.

Photos from around 2 – 3 years old are best because you will see more distinct features and not just a 6 month bundle of joy. Use dance breaks as a way to boost energy throughout the meeting. Have the person who viewed the face describe it to their team.

Let your team know several days before your next team meeting or next virtual team building event to prepare something to “Show and Tell”. It can be something sentimental, a magic trick, a family recipe, it really is anything that they are excited to share with their team. The good news is team building that virtual team building exercises aren’t that difficult to organize and don’t require a team meeting, providing that you have the right tools on hand. And they can help take the place of that water cooler or coffee convo that usually happens between co workers in a traditional office.

One of the most challenging activities on our list, spreadsheet wars pushes a team’s creative and critical thinking. Using Google Sheets, recommended thanks to its collaborative capabilities, designated groups design a solution using only the spreadsheet program based on a predetermined theme. Show and learn takes advantage of the individual skills or talents of each of your team members.

The platform has over 100 curated fun icebreaker questions included but you can also add in your own custom ones. These events are really useful for everyone without exception. ProofHub is a project management and team collaboration software that brings your remote teams, tasks, projects and communications to one place.

Hr & People Management

There are a lot of creative and fun events that employees will enjoy. Have everyone add their favorite songs to create a shared playlist that anyone can listen to and enjoy. When we announce new hires and introduce them to our team, we have each new coworker share unique stories and facts about themselves.

Making Movies & Music Videos

Once everyone is paired up have them play separately via their own zoom meeting. Keep score on who one and the last two people still in the game compete against each other. At the end, create a big video chat and get everyone to show what items they have collected.

There are several online team-building games and activities that help break the ice and bring your teams together. Let us look at some of the wildly popular virtual games and activities in demand amongst remote teams. Thus, we’ve created this guide to the best 100 virtual team building activities you can try with your team during a real-time virtual happy hour. A guide leads the virtual team building event, sharing fun trivia about the history of the ice cream float and keeping everyone hyped up with a playlist of popular music to shake along to. Once the ice cream is done, and everyone has danced around a bit, guests will cool down with an ice cream float. Each Unboxed Experiences kit is customizable, so you can include swag and other gifts to put a smile on your guests’ faces.

Nothing brings teams together quite like being stuck in a Zoom room together. Work together and use your problem-solving skills to solve clues and win your freedom. Companies like Puzzle Break and The Escape Game make it easy to share an exciting adventure with your team, even when you’re all at home. Ask your team members to post a 30-second reel video of their everyday routine. Not only does it help you get to know each other well but also, to be inspired through their activities and learn new things. It encourages members to stay productive, personal, or professional.

Foster fun and engagement, but this virtual team activity allows coworkers to learn each others’ problem-solving processes in real time. The Longest Word is a quick virtual activity you can do on video chats and conference calls. To play, arrange your people into teams and challenge them to spell a very long word.